Eyewitness Memory

7/11/2020 Six eyewitnesses misidentified a murderer – here's what went wrong in the lineup

https://theconversation.com/six-eyewitnesses-misidentified-a-murderer-heres-what-went-wrong-in-the-lineup-134767 1/6

Author

Laura Smalarz Assistant Professor of Psychology, Arizona State University

Academic rigor, journalistic flair

On the strength of six eyewitnesses’ lineup identifications, Lydell Grant was

sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for the murder of a young Texas man, Aaron

Scheerhoorn, who was stabbed to death outside a Houston nightclub in 2010.

All six of those eyewitnesses were wrong.

NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt @NBCNightlyNews

Nearly a decade into his life sentence for murder, Lydell Grant was escorted out of a Texas prison in November with his hands held high, free on bail, all thanks to DNA re-examined by a software program.

Research shows how to make lineups more fair and less biased. EvgeniyShkolenko/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Six eyewitnesses misidentified a murderer – here’s what went wrong in the lineup July 4, 2020 10.19am EDT

7/11/2020 Six eyewitnesses misidentified a murderer – here's what went wrong in the lineup

https://theconversation.com/six-eyewitnesses-misidentified-a-murderer-heres-what-went-wrong-in-the-lineup-134767 2/6

New DNA testing on biological material collected from underneath the victim’s fingernails cleared

Grant and implicated another man, Jermarico Carter, who police said confessed to the killing. Carter

has now been indicted for the murder by a grand jury, and Lydell Grant was released from prison. But

his name has not been cleared.

Faith in eyewitnesses runs so deep that despite the overwhelming proof of Grant’s innocence, the

Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused his exoneration request. Instead, the court wants the six

eyewitnesses who originally testified against Grant to respond to his claims of innocence.

It’s a fact that eyewitnesses make mistakes. There have been hundreds of cases in which mistaken

eyewitness identification testimony led to the conviction of innocent people.

The puzzling question in this case, though, is why did six eyewitnesses independently identify Lydell

Grant as the killer and then confidently testify in court?

A Texas jury found him guilty of murder. A computer algorithm proved hi… Lydell Grant was supposed to be in prison for murder. But an emerging form of DNA technology, which has also come under scrutiny, is helping …

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1:30 PM · Feb 17, 2020

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7/11/2020 Six eyewitnesses misidentified a murderer – here's what went wrong in the lineup

https://theconversation.com/six-eyewitnesses-misidentified-a-murderer-heres-what-went-wrong-in-the-lineup-134767 3/6

One might assume that Grant was the murderer’s unlucky doppelganger. But a comparison of the

pair’s mugshots reveals that they bear little physical resemblance to one another beyond both being

Black men.

As an experimental psychologist who conducts research on eyewitness identification, I’ve seen

hundreds of examples of highly confident yet mistaken eyewitnesses – both in the laboratory and in

actual court cases. My review of the transcripts from Grant’s trial suggests a simple explanation for

these high-confidence mistakes: The police did not use scientific best practices for collecting the

eyewitness identification evidence.

Mugshots of Lydell Grant (left, in 2010) and Jermarico Carter (right, in 2007) show the men don’t look very similar. KHOU/Houston Police Department

7/11/2020 Six eyewitnesses misidentified a murderer – here's what went wrong in the lineup

https://theconversation.com/six-eyewitnesses-misidentified-a-murderer-heres-what-went-wrong-in-the-lineup-134767 4/6

Conducting a lineup with the suspect in mind

Scientific best practices for conducting eyewitness lineups require that the person administering the

lineup not know who the police suspect. Just as double-blind clinical trials in medical studies are

intended to prevent patients’ and doctors’ expectations from affecting outcomes of the clinical trial,

double-blind lineups aim to prevent witnesses’ and administrators’ expectations from influencing the

outcomes of the identification procedure.

The transcript from Lydell Grant’s trial revealed that the homicide detective in charge of investigating

the case administered the lineup to the eyewitnesses. Of course, he knew that Lydell Grant was the

one under suspicion.

Psychological experiments have shown that lineup administrators who know who the suspect is end

up cuing witnesses toward that person. Compared to administrators conducting double-blind lineups,

these informed administrators are more likely to ask witnesses about the suspect and smile when

witnesses are looking at the suspect rather than at another person in the lineup.

Such behaviors are often inadvertent; neither lineup administrators nor eyewitnesses may be

consciously aware that they’re happening. Nevertheless, these subtle behavioral cues affect

eyewitnesses’ decisions by making them more likely to choose the suspect.

But if the six eyewitnesses chose Lydell Grant from the lineup only because they were cued to do so by

the case detective, why were they so confident in their identifications? According to the trial

transcript, most of the eyewitnesses testified to having been positive when they picked Grant out of

Police lineups have evolved over time, but some states still need to catch up. Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News/Chicago History Museum via Getty Images

7/11/2020 Six eyewitnesses misidentified a murderer – here's what went wrong in the lineup

https://theconversation.com/six-eyewitnesses-misidentified-a-murderer-heres-what-went-wrong-in-the-lineup-134767 6/6

Police Forensic science Eyewitness evidence Experimental Psychology Suspects Police lineup

Identification witness Eyewitnesses Eyewitness Wrongful conviction Eyewitness testimony

Eyewitness misidentification

Witnesses aren’t able to tell whether their testimony was influenced in this way. Moreover,

confirmatory feedback can alter witnesses’ memories of the original crime, making them less able to

recognize the actual perpetrator when they see him again. So, there is little to be gained from speaking

to the original eyewitnesses from Lydell Grant’s case.

How to run less biased lineups

The processes at play in Lydell Grant’s case are predictable and unfortunately common. The way to

avoid these problems with eyewitness testimony is for police to adopt best practices based on the

psychological research.

In addition to implementing double-blind lineup procedures, it’s essential that lineup administrators

document eyewitnesses’ confidence immediately following an identification. Confidence collected at

the time of an identification during a double-blind lineup procedure is informative regarding the

eyewitness’s accuracy. Confidence reported at trial after the eyewitness has received confirmatory

feedback is not.

To date, 24 states have adopted these core procedural reforms, including Texas in 2011, one year after

the investigation of Aaron Scheerhoorn’s murder. Unfortunately for Lydell Grant, these reforms came

a year too late. The remaining 26 states should act swiftly to prevent additional miscarriages of

justice, and Lydell Grant should be exonerated.

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7/11/2020 Six eyewitnesses misidentified a murderer – here's what went wrong in the lineup

https://theconversation.com/six-eyewitnesses-misidentified-a-murderer-heres-what-went-wrong-in-the-lineup-134767 5/6

the lineup. One reported that he had identified Grant without doubt or hesitation. Another stated that

the killer’s face was “burned into [her] memory immediately.”

Reinforcing what eyewitnesses ‘remember’

The witnesses’ trial testimony reveals a simple explanation for these high-confidence errors: All of the

eyewitnesses received confirmatory feedback following their identification of Grant.

Three of the eyewitnesses reported that the detective told them that they had picked the same person

other people had, though the detective himself denied having made such statements. Two other

eyewitnesses, a couple, remembered discussing their selection with one another and confirming each

other’s decisions. One eyewitness couldn’t recall whether the detective had told him anything after he

identified Grant, but the detective acknowledged telling that particular eyewitness “good job”

following the identification. The detective also admitted making a similar comment to at least one

other witness.

Research has repeatedly demonstrated that simple confirming comments such as these have dramatic

effects on eyewitnesses’ testimony. Not only do such statements inflate eyewitnesses’ confidence in

the accuracy of their identification, but they lead them to falsely remember having been that confident

all along.

As a result, witnesses who have received confirmatory feedback provide testimony that is highly

persuasive to jurors.

In one study, people playing the role of jurors were able to reliably distinguish between accurate and

mistaken eyewitnesses when the witnesses had not received any confirmatory feedback.

But when the witnesses had received a simple reinforcing comment following their identification

(“Good job, you got the guy”), the mock jurors could no longer tell the difference between accurate

and mistaken eyewitnesses. In other words, the confirmatory remark made the mistaken eyewitnesses

just as persuasive as the accurate ones.

Mistaken witnesses Accurate witnesses

How believable did jurors find eyewitness testimony? When witnesses who picked the wrong suspect out of a lineup received confirmatory feedback, their subsequent testimony became more believable to mock jurors. The witnesses were more confident and thus more persuasive.

No feedback

Confirmatory feedback

Smalarz and Wells, Law & Human Behavior. 38(2):194–202, APRIL 2014 Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY-ND • Get the data

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